Cinema: Stunted Oaks

YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES

Oh, why not? No matter what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle says, they could just as well have met as schoolboys. And it is more than likely that the twigs that grew into the sturdiest oaks of detective fiction were bent way back when: Sherlock Holmes (Nicholas Rowe) brainy and arrogant, John Watson (Alan Cox) loyal and bumbling.

In other ways, too, the pastiche that Writer Chris Columbus (Gremlins, Goonies) has concocted to show us the Young Sherlock Holmes in adolescence has something of the true canonical spirit. There are casually astounding displays of deductive reasoning, evil plotters recruited from the far...